Archive for the ‘Food’ Category

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Lab on a Chip Monitors Pollution

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

 

That’s right.  A quarter inch square chip is the workplace of nanotechnology.  An engineering team at Tel Aviv University lead by Prof. Shacham-Diamand developed the idea of the chip as a platform that sustains bacteria. The bacteria are genetically engineered and light up when exposed to a pollutants. It’s certainly more humane than allowing our animal kingdom to be the gage for our pollution problems. And it’s more accurate, and timely. 

 

Right now it’s being tested for stressors in water but the potential to use it in stem cell research and for detection of cancer is also promising. So besides helping monitor the health of our environment, this nano technology may be able to predict disease before other devices. The team is working on making lab on a chip more versatile by exposing the bacteria to a variety of toxins and chemicals.

 

The article on Science Daily’s website reports that Tel Aviv University is one of the top 5 worldwide that is working with nanotechnology. It also said,  “Funded by a $3 million grant from the United States Department of Defense Projects Agency (DARPA), the new lab-on-a-chip could become a defensive weapon that protects America from biological warfare.” So this could be a line of defense against terrorism too.

 

My question is can it detect bad peanut butter, or lettuce, or spinach? The FDA suffers from lack of regulators but if they had some of these handy dandy labs, say on their key chains, it would make their work quick and accurate and they could cover a lot more ground, and maybe we wouldn’t be dying from all that self regulation.

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090217125732.htm

 

 

 

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Posted in Environmentalism, Health, Ocean Pollution, Pollution, Science, U.S. Food Supply | No Comments »

Bananas May Disappear in the Not Too Distant Future

Friday, January 9th, 2009

 

I just read a really interesting article about the history of the banana as we know it, or rather, don’t know it. The banana is dying from Panama Disease. The disease will likely destroy all bananas because industry has basically created and propagated only one type of banana. It’s only logic then that if disease strikes it will kill all bananas because there are no other varieties that might be resistant.

 

There is also a very bloody past to the banana industry, and so the name “banana republic”. It’s not a very nice history what’s been done to the banana, people, land, and forests relative to one of America’s favorite fruits that have graced lunchboxes what seems like forever. Oh there will be substitutions but the creamy sweet banana we once knew is looking at impending doom not as much from disease but from corporate greed in a deregulated industry.

 

The title of the article is: “Why Bananas are a Parable for Our Times,” by Johann Hari, a columnist for the London Independent. Read what deregulation did for the banana. As the title suggests and the writer aptly describes:

Is there a parable for our times in this odd milkshake of banana, blood and fungus? For a hundred years, a handful of corporations were given a gorgeous fruit, set free from regulation, and allowed to do what they wanted with it. What happened? They had one good entrepreneurial idea – and to squeeze every tiny drop of profit from it, they destroyed democracies, burned down rainforests, and ended up killing the fruit itself.

Sounds familiar doesn’t it?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/why-bananas-are-a-parable_b_156102.html

Posted in Food, Industry | No Comments »

New FDA Guidelines Regarding Mercury in Fish

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008

 

There is a draft of new FDA consumer guidelines regarding mercury in fish floating around Capitol Hill that the EPA says it simply will not endorse. The EPA is heads up on this one for a change. They accuse the FDA of being closer to the fishing industry than concern for consumers. The new draft as seen on CNN, states specifically that eating over 12 oz. of fish per week has more advantages than disadvantages for the consumer regardless of mercury content. The EPA questions the science behind this draft.

 

Pregnant women should play it safe and follow former guidelines for them that limit the consumption of larger fish like albacore tuna to less than 12 oz’s. per week. Mercury poisoning can have adverse affects on the human fetus.

 

This is an offering by the exiting Bush Administration to the fishing industry. It’s another instance of science being tossed and replaced with ideology hell-bent on helping business regardless of the harm it does to the air, water, earth, animals, plants/trees, and humans.  So consumer beware until we have a real FDA again and agencies that we can hopefully trust.  

Posted in EPA, FDA, Federal Government, Fishing, Food, Food Supply Contamination, Health, Industry, U.S. Food Supply | No Comments »

New Iron Clad Bush Deregulations Jeopardize Environment/Public Safety

Friday, October 31st, 2008

 

 

While many are busy trying to make change in this country through our upcoming elections, the Bush administration is feverishly trying to deregulate more. And some of this deregulation would not only have horrible consequences for the environment, but also public safety.

 

Think that it’s no problem because either Obama or maverick McCain will undo the Bush damage? Think again. The Clinton administration tried to put through regulatory laws a little too late at the end of his administration. When Bush took office he scrapped over 250 of Clinton’s regulations for the environment, public safety, etc., quite easily. So this time around the Bush administration is making sure there are no loose ends to their lobbyist loving deregulation push. It will take a heck of a lot of time, trouble, and interest to undo what Bush puts in place now. It affects farms, animals, our food, imports, fishing, environment, clean air, water, global warming, and public safety.

 

We’ve seen what deregulation has done with tainted food, toys, the sell off of our national parks, a spike in killing wolves, buffalo, and wild mustang horses, and many -other things that affect global warming like over fishing, which allows the growth of rotting plants that results in increasing methane explosions into the atmosphere. We’ve slowly learned that every little thing affects something else in a big way—a process that the Bush administration has never grasped. Their concern is for corporate gain at the expense of many things that directly and adversely affect us.  

 

Please read the entire article and contact your congressional reps to stop this last minute deregulation that could prove to be the last blow to the environment and our own safety!

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/30/AR2008103004749.html?hpid%3Dtopnews&sub=AR

 

 

Posted in Animals in Peril, Bush Administration, Conservation, Endangered Species, Environmental Legislation, Environmentalism, Farm Animals, Farms/Farming, Federal Government, Food, Global Warming, Global Warming Policy, Industry, Legislators, Marine Life, Politics, Pollution, Wildlife | No Comments »

Green Cuisine Plant

Thursday, September 18th, 2008

 

I recently watched Planet Green’s presentation about Contessa Foods developing a green frozen food manufacturing plant. It’s the only such plant awarded a LEED award by the US Green Building Council. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design or LEED is a third party certification program and nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings.

 

This plant was designed to conserve as much as possible and as a result, Contessa Foods cut both their energy consumption and related emissions by 50% within one year. 

 

Now if Contessa can do this within a year, why can’t everyone figure out ways to really lower their consumption of energy? It is the easiest and most prudent thing to do right now. We have high gas prices and want to drill yet we’ve hardly scratched the surface at conservation. Speed limits haven’t been lowered, people haven’t even been told to stop running outdoor lights. We did these things without a whole lot of griping in the 70’s, but now we have the audacity to just demand more without cutting back first. Remember the years no one had Christmas lights around their houses? You were the bad guy if you put them up.

 

Contessa Foods is a good guy. According to Contessa’s CEO, John Z. Bazevich,  “Until now, the USGBC has never LEED-certified a frozen-food manufacturing facility. As a leader in our industry, we didn’t wait for environmental standards to be established. Instead, we collaborated with LEED and decided to raise the bar for the entire industry and to do the right thing for the long-term sustainability of our environment.” Attaboy!

 

Imagine if all manufacturing had that attitude? Think of the money they could save too.

Contessa stands out in 5 areas of the LEED rating system with:

 

  • A solar-power array that reduces carbon dioxide emissions by more than 730,000 pounds each year, producing an effect similar to conserving 276 acres of pine forest – roughly the size of 209 football fields, including end zones – each year.
  • A heat-recovery system that captures waste heat from the refrigeration system and redirects it to preheat water for the plant’s boilers.
  • Variable frequency drives that adjust the amount of power supplied to motors at specific times or under specific conditions to minimize energy use.
  • An innovative loading dock that prevents the loss of refrigerated air, reducing temperature fluctuation – and energy use – in the loading dock area.

 

What I saw on TV was an impeccably clean plant where all the rooms within are distinctly cut off from the others, the idea being to keep heat with heat and cold with cold.

 

Their motto at Contessa: “Reduce, Redirect, and Reuse. It’s a good model to follow for sure.

 

Read more about what Contessa accomplished:

http://myseafoodshow08.bdmetrics.com/portal/ViewPressRelease.aspx?id=35922&cid=4217488

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Conservation, Energy, Environmentalism, Food, Green Construction, Methods for Lowering Energy Costs, Solar Energy | No Comments »

Kosher Food and Humane Farming

Thursday, August 21st, 2008

 

 

I’ve been wondering how long it would take for religious communities to recognize the cruelty of animal farming; how extremely opposite it is from the idea of kosher where animals are tended with kindness and the ” method of slaughter is a quick, deep stroke across the throat with a perfectly sharp blade with no nicks or unevenness. This method is painless, causes unconsciousness within two seconds, and is widely recognized as the most humane method of slaughter possible.” A condition under which the meat is further processed is supposed to be extremely sanitary.

 

This is hardly the definition of a CAFO, where animals are so depressed and frustrated, they chew on the metal bars of their confinement. I’ve written so many blogs about CAFO’s and animal farms. That’s why I was so happy to read an article in the Summer publication of All Animals, by the Humane Society of the U.S., about America’s churches stepping forward to start a grassroots endeavor to restore humane farming.

 

Methodists support totally natural systems of farming. Jewish rabbis recommend that humans strive to prevent animal suffering. While many other denominations condemn factory farms altogether.

 

HSUS’s “All Creatures Great and Small” campaign plans to call on the religious, I like to say spiritual, individuals to only purchase cage-free eggs. The article says that “participants can make an on line pledge to do so and pass it along to friends as a form of networking. It also said, “They can then download materials to use in youth groups, Sunday schools, sermons, and bulletins.” There is also a documentary from “people whose religion inspired them to make dietary changes.” This particular campaign will be this October during the monthlong feast of St. Francis of Assisi, saint to all animals.

 

This one small pledge is designed to spread grassroots style and hopefully bring awareness to the spiritually minded about the guidelines in the bible as to what and how we eat. People can argue that the guidelines are in the Old Testament that we’re living the New Testament now. Yet we cannot simply disregard the entire part of the bible that tells us where we came from can we? Without it, we would have no heritage.

 

At very least, in America, where spiritualism seems to abound these days, it might make us pay better attention to not only what we eat but how it was raised. It could make a big difference in our health and diminish the amount of pollution we unleash into the environment from factory farms. Not bad by-products for a little extra awareness about what we eat.   

Posted in CAFO's, Farm Animals, Farms/Farming, Food, Health, Morality, Poultry, U.S. Food Supply | No Comments »

New Safety Guidelines for Eating Fish from Michigan

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

WXYZ posted new safety guidelines for eating fish caught in Michigan. I knew that no one is supposed to eat catfish or carp from in or around the Detroit River, but I didn’t know that all other fish was to be limited to one meal per MONTH? That’s been a rule for 20 years.

The new rules state that kids under 15 or child bearing women should never eat any small mouth bass or walleye over 18 inches. And do not eat carp, catfish, or white bass from the Saginaw Bay and River and Tittabawassee River.

 

I went to the Fish Advisory website at michigan.gov and read about how lake fish should be cooked:

 

Cut off all the fat.

Remove or poke holes in the fish’s skin before cooking. This will help the fat and chemicals to drain off the fish.

Bake, broil, or grill the fish on a rack. Throw away the drippings.

Do not eat the guts, head, skin, bones, or dark fatty areas.

Do not re-use the oil that was used to deep or pan fry the fish.

 

Sorry, but these directions remind me of a label on a bottle of pesticide where it says to use gloves, do not get on skin, in eyes, or mouth, wash everything thoroughly, do not use sprayer for anything else, etc.

The most important thing I did read was: Mercury stays in the filet of the fish and cannot be cut or cooked away. Use the MDCH guides to choose fish that are low in mercury.

After reading this all I could think of is my husband’s friend, an avid fisherman, who tossed mercury off as something that can just be cut away. I didn’t think so, but you can’t talk to a fisherman. This one happens to be single, so at least he’s not taking it home to the kids.

 

http://www.wxyz.com/alnews/local/story.aspx?content_id=7d15f21b-a073-4604-afc5-4d09431d1952

http://www.michigan.gov/documents/FishAdvisory03_67354_7.pdf

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Environmentalism, Fishing, Food, Great Lakes Pollution, Health, Michigan/Great Lakes | No Comments »

Food Prices to Rise Another Five Percent

Friday, July 25th, 2008

 

 

I heard this on ABC news last week that food prices were rising still higher, another five percent, due to corn production for ethanol. But it’s not because of rising prices of corn overall. It’s due to high oil prices.

 

The following is very good report about this: http://www.ncga.com/news/notd/pdfs/061407_EthanolAndFoodPrices.pdf

 

One thing I noticed in this article was about the huge increase in ethanol production reported. Is anybody else finding these ethanol pumps, because I’m not locating a whole heck of a lot?

 

Oil prices just dropped a little so our food should be cheaper for awhile too, otherwise this equation isn’t working. Or is the oil price drop just a facade for the election? If so, and rising food prices are relative to oil, then we know what we’re in for after the election.

 

And what about the rest of the world that is in starvation mode because of corn? I’m going to have to look that one up. Is much of the world’s starvation due to high oil costs, or high corn costs? Either way it’s just not right.  

Posted in Conservation, Environmentalism, Ethanol, Farms/Farming, Food, Oil Industry | No Comments »

People Hunting People in Tanzania

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

 

 

It wasn’t all that long ago I blogged about the bush meat trade. Since apes are our closest DNA relatives this seems not only barbaric, but I wanted to know if cannibalism was next.

 

While watching BBC news late last night, I heard something worse if there can be such a thing. People are hunting people, but not for food or because of starvation, but because of religious beliefs.

 

In this country we may denigrate voodoo, shaman, and tribal religions of other countries, but to many these occult beliefs are as legitimate as ours.  This is not about religion vs religion though. This is hunting for wealth and prosperity, like bringing in an exotic animal skin in exchange for prosperity, or so the albino hunter believes.

 

In Tanzania, Africa there happens to be a disproportionate number of albino citizens. Albino’s have no melanin or dark pigment in their skin so they are white; their hair is white, eyelashes, etc. Witchdoctor’s in Tanzania believe albino body parts will bring wealth to a person.

 

Twenty-five albino’s have been killed, children included, the latest was a seven month old baby.  One woman watched as three people approached her albino husband sitting outside and hacked at him with a machete.  By time she returned with help, he was dead.

 

Another albino women pleaded with anybody listening to get her out of the country or to a safer urban area. There is a big denial that this religious belief is being propagated but BBC news is still investigating. Many Tanzanian’s say occult like religious beliefs infiltrate the government also. So everyone is slow to help the albino population.

 

Protected mountain gorilla’s have been poached for their hands. Their bodies left lying without them. Now people are found lying without body parts, body parts that supposedly bring wealth to someone else.

 

I don’t even know how to tag this blog. I’ve got categories for blogs for saving animals, marine life, trees, even insects, and habitat, air, water, parks, and human health, but humans as actual prey by other humans is a new one on me.  

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7518049.stm

 

 

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Posted in Africa, BBC, Bushmeat Trade, Morality | No Comments »

For Our Safety; Creating Legislation to Keep Politics Out of Science

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

 

I read in the Union of Concerned Scientists newsletter, Volume 10, Number 3, Summer 2008, that the U.S. Senate approved bipartisan legislation in March to improve the effectiveness of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Good idea after last summer’s tainted spinach, tainted lettuce, beef recalls, and toxic toys went unchecked.

 

It seems there has been political interference in the work of CPSC employees like statisticians, psychologists, chemists, and engineers. The legislation is meant to keep science independent of political tactics to ensure consumers remain safe. There are whistle blower protections built in to the legislation that extends to other employees of companies regulated by the CPSC. The agency must also accept anonymous complaints via the Internet.

 

The Union of Concerned Scientists worked with doctor’s and consumer groups to put this Senate Bill together and encouraged scientists to speak up if they have had political interference in the past.

 

There is a House Bill that addresses the same problems but lacks the whistle blower protections. The idea now is to combine the bills to become the strongest legislation possible.

 

I’m certainly glad this is happening, but does it occur to anyone that we are now in the habit of writing legislation to keep the Bush administration’s mitts out of most things scientific, that we’ve had to use the supreme court and federal court judges to get the EPA to act on our behalf relative to the environment, and to get the Dept. of the Interior to move on putting polar bears on the endangered list?

 

If the agencies that are in existence to keep the public, environment, wildlife and habitat, food, and imports safe are being kept from doing their respective jobs by interference from politicians, then instead of doing this round about and creating new legislation, on top of legislation that already exists, wouldn’t it just be easier to get rid of the politicians affecting the problems? Remember to vote for a heck of a lot more than president this November, like voting out of office those that interfere with our safety, the earth’s safety, and wildlife looking to survive in a safe haven. 

 

 

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Posted in Bush Administration, Dept. of the Interior, EPA, Endangered Species, Environmental Legislation, Environmental Spin, Health, Legislators, Morality, Politics, Science, Supreme Court, U.S. Food Supply | 1 Comment »

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